To the fore! Mom-and-pop golf course thrives
Toolbox
By Thatcher Moats
Times Argus Staff - Published: June 7, 2009
WOODBURY – When Darwin Thompson was 15, he went on a trip to Cape Cod with a youth group, and one of his friends brought a set of golf clubs on the trip. Thompson golfed for the first time.
"I also streaked for the first time, but that's another story," said Thompson, 51, in an interview on Friday.
Thompson ended up buying the clubs from his friend and bringing them home to Woodbury, where he lived with his parents and his brothers.
Thompson whacked a few golf balls into a cow pasture on the family land, and it occurred to him: This pasture would make a great golf course.
It's a dream he held onto as he spent a 20-year career in the U.S. Air Force in such golf-friendly locales as Myrtle Beach and Monterey, Calif., honing his skills and lowering his handicap to seven.
When he moved back to Woodbury, Thompson and his family began carving a golf course out of that pasture, and now at least six members of the Thompson family help run a par-three, nine-hole course tucked in the hills of the town that lends the course its name.
The Woodbury Golf Course, which is in its fifth season, is family-run, and you won't find fancy amenities there. It's also short; the longest hole is 185 yards.
But what it lacks in polish and length, it makes up for in country charm and surprisingly smooth greens.
On league night, the back deck of 74-year-old Lenora Thompson's house – which is next to the course – becomes a club house, where she serves up homemade cookies, potato salad, hot dogs and hamburgers. Members pay a flat fee at the beginning of the year and can enjoy Lenora's fixings all season.
Also on the Thompsons' property is the family's firewood business, and a shop where members of the Thompson family sharpen blades for the machine shop at Caspian Arms, a gun company in Wolcott.
The Woodbury Golf Course is one of a handful of smaller "mom-and-pop" courses throughout the state that often fly below the radar, said Jim Bassett, executive director of the Vermont Golf Association.
For example, Stonehedge in North Clarendon is another par-three nine-hole course, Bassett said. There's another one in Alburgh, he said, and in Middletown Springs is a course with 18 tees, but just three greens. Each green has two holes, and you shoot for a different hole depending what tee you're on, playing from different angles.
In Woodbury, examining who does what at the course is kind of like constructing a Thompson family tree.
There are the three brothers, Kirk, Darwin and Jeff Thompson. Lenora is their mother. Jason is Kirk's son. Annette is Kirk's wife.
Lenora, Jeff, Kirk and Darwin own the course, and the whole family – along with some friends — pitches in.
Jason is the greenskeeper. Darwin handles the merchandise at the pro shop, they all share in the mowing and do whatever else needs to be done.
But they all agreed that Lenore is the glue that keeps it all together. She works at the pro shop and does a lot of mowing.
"It's a lot of work, but it's nice having the people around to visit. I guess I would be pretty lonely without it," said Lenora, whose husband Ken passed away four years ago.
Lenora was skeptical when the project began. She wasn't sure a golf course could emerge from the rough landscape that a Thompson ancestor, Frank Thompson, bought around 1908 when he moved from Montana.
"You know if you could have seen it, it was just woods and pasture and rocks," said Lenore. "I thought 'Oh, wow.' I didn't now if it would work. But my kids knew it would work, so I sort of went along with them."
Bankers were more skeptical, so the project was financed using credit cards.
"What do a bunch of loggers know about building a golf course?" bankers asked, according to Kirk Thompson.
It took about four years to get the course ready to open, and the course boasts 45 members so far this year, up from the 13 members who joined the first season.
Jason described the membership as a "mostly blue-collar group."
"A lot of our people are working-class people, so right around 4:30, they start rolling in and the parking lot fills up," said Jason Thompson, 28.
Jason takes pride in his greens, which are surprisingly smooth and plush. He studied turf management at UMass-Amherst, and gives his greens "tough love," he said, by watering them every three days, which strengthens their root system.
Lenny Badeau, a member who was at the course last Wednesday with his brother Bernie, said the greens are one of the best features of the course, some of which fall away at every edge.
"Some of the greens, it's like putting on a volcano," said Badeau.
At the par-three course, where a golfer has a chance to hit the green every time they tee off, the talk last week was about who got a hole-in-one on which day.
But Bernie Badeau, a 58-year-old Woodbury resident, is almost certainly the only person to get a hole-in-one using one arm.
A stroke damaged Badeau's left side, so he golfs with just his right arm. Lenny Badeau said his brother Bernie still beats him whenever they play.
"They can't beat me because of one reason: I got a stroke on them," said Bernie before he and his brother wheeled their cart to the first tee.
thatcher.moats@timesargus.com
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